by Abby Gaines
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but, if I know you—”
“You don’t,” she said. It was spooky how she found herself giving him the same objections he’d thrown at her over the past few weeks.
“Yeah, I do.” He didn’t look happy at the realization. “There’s more to your plan than this. What else are you offering your parents?”
“Exactly the same focus group fee as everyone else.”
“There must be more,” he said suspiciously.
Rachel pushed past him before he read the guilt in her face. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re ready to get started. If you need another coffee, grab it now, then please take your seats.”
She ignored Garrett while she waited for everyone to settle.
One of her regulars stopped in front of Rachel. “What time do we finish this afternoon? I have a doctor’s appointment at five.”
“We’ll be done by three-thirty,” Rachel assured her.
Her mother heard. “I thought you said we should plan on taking the six o’clock train home.”
Blast. “That’s because—” she turned away from Garrett “—I wanted to have some time with you and Dad, afterward. I thought we might get a drink or a bite to eat.”
Nora hesitated. “I guess we could do that.”
“Of course you could,” Rachel said, rather shrilly. You’re my parents. Had they guessed why she wanted this time with them?
“Excuse me, Nora,” Garrett said.
Rachel wheeled around. “You need to leave. Now.”
“I couldn’t help overhearing,” Garrett said to her mom. “If you’re staying around for a little while, would you and your husband like to visit the set where we made the Lexus commercial?”
Rachel let out a hiss.
“We’d love to,” her father boomed.
“Mom, I really need—”
“Thank you, Garrett, we’d be delighted,” Nora said, far too quickly for Rachel’s liking.
She clamped her mouth shut. Her mom wanted to avoid the looming conversation, and Garrett had just made it possible. She should have know better than to expect The Shark to take her side.
But it still hurt.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NOTHING WAS GOING as it should. Garrett had monopolized her parents after the focus group on Thursday, and Rachel hadn’t had a chance to do more than ascertain that they hadn’t yet made up their minds about Dayton. When she’d confronted Garrett about his interfering, he’d said, “You’ll thank me tomorrow.”
Which she hadn’t, just as she hadn’t thanked him for her breakup with Piers. The man had a very strange notion of how to earn gratitude.
Things weren’t going well on the LeeAnne front, either. Her sister still wasn’t returning her calls.
Work wasn’t much better. Rachel had emailed Tony some suggestions for improving the team spirit around KBC, but hadn’t heard back from him. Her team was doing good work…but not exceptional work. She didn’t know how to inspire them to do better. Clive continued to slip out on mysterious errands, and the more she thought about it, the more Rachel worried he presented a threat she didn’t fully understand.
As for Garrett… Garrett was focused on his pitch to the exclusion of all else, it seemed. Now that he’d figured out he really wanted to make partner, he was going for it. Rachel had tried pumping Alice for information about how things were going. The breathless answer, “Garrett’s a genius.”
Apparently, his team had the most brilliant creative since…well, since Garrett’s world-famous Lexus campaign.
Rachel prowled the fifty-fourth floor on Monday morning, too keyed up to concentrate on her work, but knowing she couldn’t afford to take time out.
She walked past Clive’s office and found him in close confabulation with two members of his team. He glanced up, caught Rachel’s eye and smiled. There was too much self-satisfaction in that smile for her comfort. Rachel walked on by, as if she knew exactly where she was going. She walked all the way to the end of the floor.
“Hi, Rachel.” Jenny, the accounts payable clerk who occupied the southwest corner, quickly put down the nail file she was using. “Sorry, torn nail. I’ve done all my work for the morning.”
“I won’t tattle.” Rachel hovered next to her desk.
An idea struck her. Jenny had once confided that she hadn’t been to college and had been excited to learn that Rachel hadn’t, either. It gave her hope she might be able to progress from her current job at the bottom of the ladder. She seemed bright. College material.
“Jenny, what was the reason you never went to college?” Rachel asked.
Jenny eyed her torn nail with irritation. “My folks couldn’t afford it, and they drilled some old-fashioned ideas about debt into me.”
Rachel sighed, remembering her own parents’ eagerness for her to take on massive loans. She pulled up a chair from the adjacent empty cubicle. “Did Garrett or Clive talk to you about this yet?”
Jenny shook her head, puzzled.
“Okay, I need to pick your brain.” Rachel wheeled her chair farther into the girl’s cubicle so no one would see her and get the same idea. Of course, Garrett probably didn’t know Jenny existed. “Let’s talk.”
It was a useful half hour, backing up the conclusions of her focus group, but adding a younger perspective.
“Thanks, Jenny, that was great,” Rachel said, as she stood to leave.
“You’re welcome.” Jenny picked up her nail file. “You’re a real inspiration to me, Rachel, the way you rose up through the ranks even without an education.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said. “I’m sure you’ll start progressing soon.”
The girl grimaced. “It can’t come soon enough for me. The accounts payable work is so easy I’m left filing my nails, but so far the only promotion I’ve had is to health and safety officer.” She indicated a cupboard on her wall with a red cross on it. “Which wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.”
Rachel laughed. “Don’t knock it—I did a stint as health and safety gal. Though it’s a bit more laborious these days—you should probably be recording that torn fingernail.”
Assuming nothing else had changed, the cupboard would contain a logbook for accidents and hazards. Along with a first aid kit, a folder full of safety procedures…and hanging on a rows of hooks, spare keys for all the offices.
Clive’s key was in that cupboard. And Garrett’s.
Rachel’s palms dampened as an idea hit her, shameful in its deviousness. These are desperate times.
Office procedure said the cupboard should be locked at night, but during the day it was left unlocked, so people could get to the first aid equipment in a hurry.
“You’ve been so helpful, Jenny, answering all my questions. I’d like to do something for you,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you go have a manicure, fix that nail properly? My treat.”
“Really?”
“It’s nearly lunchtime. If you leave now, you’ll beat the rush to the nail bar across the street. I’ll call them and leave my credit card number.”
“That would be amazing.” Jenny was already gathering up her purse, tossing in the nail file. “Thanks, Rachel.”
The moment she’d gone, Rachel opened the cupboard door. Yep, the hooks, just as she remembered, with keys on them. Above each hook was a sticker with the name of the office occupant. Two keys on each hook.
Rachel took a key off Clive’s hook and slipped it into her pocket. If he didn’t want people snooping around, he shouldn’t act so suspicious. She closed the cupboard, then went to phone the nail bar.
* * *
STEPHANIE WAS BEING FOLLOWED.
Again.
By her husband.
She didn’t look behind her as she crossed 4th Avenue, but she knew Dwight was there. This was the third time he’d tailed her.
Why? He wasn’t the kind of possessive man who needed to know his wife’s whereabouts. When they’d been together, he’d had little interest in her activities, and sh
e wasn’t worried that he’d suddenly developed stalker tendencies. The most likely explanation was that he was concerned for her well-being. But he would see admitting that outright as a sign of weakness.
She’d noticed him for the first time on Thursday, the day after they’d met in the toy store. Which was ironic, because at the time she’d been tailing Clive, Garrett’s colleague. The activity made her feel guilty…but this was the first time Garrett had asked her to do something for him. Ever. Clive hadn’t seemed to realize she was there, which said more about his lack of suspicion than her surveillance abilities. Yet somehow that day, and on other days since, she had known that Dwight, a trained naval intelligence officer, was following her. Must be a husband-wife thing.
Last Friday, as usual, she’d gone for a walk in Central Park. Her stroll had taken her to the Chess & Checkers House, her favorite place in the park—she loved to watch the players, mostly older men at this time of day, intent on their games.
She didn’t play chess herself, though Dwight was a keen player. When they were first married, she’d asked him to teach her, but he’d said it would be too frustrating for both of them. She hadn’t asked again, but she’d gotten into the habit of stopping by this area of the park whenever she was in the city. She would pick a game, and watch it through—it was an oddly compelling sport to watch. Which probably meant she’d grown old before her time.
On Friday, she’d settled on a bench near the pair she’d chosen to watch. Over the years, she’d picked up the moves of the game, so she was soon engrossed. She wouldn’t have seen Dwight at all, if a player at another table—a man whose demeanor shrieked retired military, hadn’t called out, “Calder! Over here.”
Stephanie had looked up at the sound of her own name. And seen Dwight—her Dwight—hurrying away. She hadn’t seen his face, but she knew his coat and his brisk, controlled walk.
It confirmed her suspicion that their encounter outside the toy store hadn’t been accidental.
On Sunday, she’d seen him again, seen his face reflected in a store window. When she looked around, he was gone.
Now, two days later, she’d seen Dwight on the other side of the Bergdorf maternity wear department. She wondered where his assistant thought he was. Or if with his usual rigorous honesty he put Spy on Stephanie into his diary.
He wasn’t calling her, he certainly wasn’t begging her to go back to him…but he was following her. The knowledge filled her with hope.
* * *
RACHEL NEEDED TO USE Clive’s spare office key soon, and to put it back. Just her luck if Clive lost his key, asked Jenny for a spare, then noticed someone had purloined— borrowed—the other spare.
The easiest thing would be to come back into the office tonight, she decided. Waiting around for others to leave wasn’t a good idea, when people often worked until nine o’clock. Better to go innocently home, then return later.
She waited until midnight. Since her neighborhood wasn’t the best, she called a cab to take her back downtown, rather than walk the shadowed stretch to the subway.
She considered dressing in black jeans and T-shirt, as any self-respecting spy would, but that would look suspicious. So she stuck with her regular jeans and a copper-colored tee. Totally innocent.
The cab traveled fast in the light traffic, reaching the KBC building by twelve-fifteen.
The elevator ride seemed every bit as slow as the one she’d taken with Garrett that day. The day everything had changed in what seemed like a heartbeat.
On the fifty-fourth floor, she swiped her ID card for after-hours access beyond the reception area. The security records would show she’d been here, but that was easily explained by a sudden burst of creativity. She’d never been questioned about late-night office visits before.
She’d also never felt anxious about being in the office late before. But tonight, probably because her purpose was nefarious, she had a bad case of the jitters.
Get in, get the info, get out, she told herself, forcing herself to slow her footsteps to a near-normal pace as she walked a darkened row of cubicles toward Clive’s office.
The key worked without a problem. Rachel had turned on the overhead lights in the common area, but she left them off in Clive’s office, just in case someone else had a midnight stroke of genius and showed up to work. One lit office would stand out instantly in the row of dark ones. She pulled out a flashlight and shone it on the file drawer behind the desk where she’d expect to find Clive’s Brightwater work. She pulled open the drawer. Ah, there it was, under B. Good old Clive.
She lifted the file out and set it on the desk. A twinge of guilt made her pause…but this wasn’t just a job, this was her security, her life. Besides, she remembered Clive had once been handed a file by a friendly bartender that had been forgotten by a Saatchi staffer. Naturally, he’d read it, as had half of KBC.
Rachel opened the folder. She was more looking for signs of what Clive might be up to with his secret meetings than for the details of his creative, but it was the creative that came to hand. Clive had taken a different tack from her, focusing on the sense of community and friendships that students would develop at a Brightwater college. That was the weird thing about creative work. A hook that was obvious to one person wouldn’t be rated by another.
Rachel sifted through to another document, a schedule of meetings. Damn, she should have checked her flashlight before she came; the bulb was showing definite signs of dimming. She moved it closer to the page, casting a yellow spotlight on the paper.
“Find anything interesting?” a voice said from the doorway.
Rachel squawked and dropped her flashlight. It rolled onto the floor and went out.
“Garrett, what the hell are you doing here?”
He turned on his own flashlight, more powerful than hers, and trained the beam on her face. Rachel shielded her eyes with her arm.
“I’m guessing the same as you,” he said.
“Could you lower that thing, please?”
When he was no longer dazzling her, she said, “For a guy who doesn’t get involved, you have a bad habit of interfering in everything I do.”
“I’m not here because of you,” he said. “I wanted to see what Clive’s been up to.” He dangled a key in front of her. “That health and safety girl—”
“Jenny,” she inserted.
“—actually left her desk for more than five minutes yesterday, went shopping or something. I took the opportunity to borrow a key.”
“So now there’s no spare on Clive’s hook?” she said, aghast. “Garrett, if anyone had opened that cupboard today it would have been immediately obvious someone was spying on Clive.”
“Lucky no one checked, then.” He tossed the key in the air and caught it. “To be honest, Rach, I’m kind of weirded out that you and I had the same idea at the same time.”
“You’re a bad influence,” she muttered. “And by the way, I’m still mad at you for butting in with my mom and dad after the focus group.”
“I did you a favor,” he said dismissively. “You’re so damn determined to hang on, I knew you wouldn’t take my advice unless I forced you.”
“What happened to On my own terms?” she demanded.
“That’s for the advanced jerk,” he said. “You’re a beginner.” He scanned her figure. “I always thought pink was your color, but that bronzey thing is good, too.”
“You seriously sit around thinking about what my color is?” she said.
He grinned. “Okay, I was trying to distract you from whining.”
She bit down on a smile. It was hard to stay mad at Garrett.
“Tell me what Clive’s up to,” he said. “What did you find?”
“No details of any secret meetings or emails,” she said. “But if you want to take a look at his pitch…”
“Since we’re here…” Garrett began skimming the material.
“He’s banging the community and friends drum—his graphics look a bit like Facebook.” Thou
gh not so similar that they’d have a lawsuit on their hands.
She leaned in to show him what she meant and found herself so close she could see the shadow of imminent beard on his jaw. So close she could smell that damn pineneedle and orange-peel scent.
Rachel shifted from one foot to the other.
“Huh,” Garrett said. “His words aren’t that compelling, but the graphics are great.”
“I agree.”
Together, they flipped through the rest of the materials.
“I’m happy to report my pitch is better than this.” Garrett gave the last page a dismissive flick with thumb and forefinger.
“You mean your team’s pitch?”
“Absolutely.” He grinned.
Rachel closed the file. “So is my team’s.” Then she ruined it by adding, “Assuming the client has any taste.”
“You worry too much,” Garrett said. “You can beat Clive any time.”
“Clive might win a CLIO,” she muttered as Garrett returned the file to the drawer.
“The CLIOs don’t matter.”
She snorted.
“They’re nice to have,” he admitted. “And they convey a certain level of credibility. But if your creative is the best for Brightwater, the client will see that.”
He sounded sincere.
Rachel knew better.
“But you don’t believe my creative will be the best,” she said.
“Afraid not.” He shrugged. “If I thought yours would be better than mine, Rach, I’d give up now.”
“I don’t know what to say about that stunning tribute to my ability. And,” she added halfheartedly, “it’s Rachel.”
He grabbed her hand, twined his fingers through hers. “Seriously, Rach, I plan to win this partnership. You need to start thinking about where you’ll go when KBC fires you. If you’re smart, you’ll start making inquiries at other firms now. You’re more marketable when you haven’t just lost a pitch.”
